Canadian Blood Services on Wednesday afternoon will collect its first COVID-19 convalescent plasma donation for a national study probing the use of the treatment, iPolitics has learned.

The donation, to be collected in Vancouver, is for CONCOR, a national clinical trial designed to test the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 convalescent plasma as a treatment for patients infected with the virus, the country’s blood agency confirmed.

Prospective donors must be younger than 67 years old and fully recovered from COVID-19 with no symptoms for the past 28 days. These samples will be collected at any of the Canadian Blood Services’ fixed donor centres.

“Currently, there is not enough scientific evidence to prove whether COVID-19 convalescent plasma is a safe and effective treatment for patients with the virus, which is why it is not widely available in Canada,” reads the organization’s website.

“Well-designed clinical trials, like the one Canadian Blood Services is participating in, will help provide the information necessary to prove whether convalescent plasma is a safe and effective treatment. The results from the clinical trial will inform future decisions on the wider availability of convalescent plasma.”

Convalescent plasma was used as a treatment for patients during the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak. The process involves drawing white blood cells – where antibodies are found – from patients who have recovered from a viral illness and then giving the plasma from that blood to a person who’s sick with the same disease.

Dr. Dana Devine, the chief scientist at Canadian Blood Services, told iPolitics last month that there is “some anecdotal evidence” from China that convalescent blood plasma has effectively treated the coronavirus.

“This was not done in a proper clinical trial setting, so we don’t know for certain,” she said, in an email.

Canadian Blood Services has established a national convalescent plasma collection program and is actively recruiting potential convalescent plasma donors across the country through a new online registry.

The CONCOR study will include both Canadian Blood Services and its Quebec equivalent Héma-Québec, as well as 10 research teams and more than 50 hospitals across the country. Héma-Québec collected its first convalescent plasma donation for the CONCOR trial on Monday.